Hawaii entrepreneurship center launches $2.5M expansion project

The University of Hawaii’s Pacific Asian Center for Entrepreneurship is going public with its $2.5 million capital campaign aimed at helping the center grow into a bigger space on campus as well as boost its program offerings.

Executive Director Susan Yamada, who has been leading the program for the past five years, told PBN the campaign will help take the center to the next level. The center teaches entrepreneurial thinking to some 600 to 800 students spanning 15 programs each year, she said.

“We’ve gathered a lot of momentum both inside the university and outside in the business community; We’ve built a brand,” she said of her past five years running it. “Now it’s a matter of looking at what’s happening in the next five years. We feel there is a lot we can do still.”

The first part involves moving from its current 800-square-foot office located on the third floor of the Shidler College of Business building on the Manoa campus into the fourth and fifth floors of that same building. It is a move that will more than triple space to 2,500 square feet. About $500,000 of the $2.5 million will go specifically to renovations of those two floors, which currently house various business programs that will be relocated.

“The bottom of those two floors will be a co-working space, and the top floor will house our offices,” Yamada said. “The co-working space will be a really cool spot where students can collaborate, work on plans with white boards everywhere, LCD screens, modular furniture — we want it to be the hub, like the Starbucks of the university for entrepreneurship.”

Joining the fifth floor will also be a new center that is still getting off the ground, called a “proof of concept center.” It stems from UH’s Hawaii Innovation Initiative that seeks to grow the university’s research arm from $409 million as of fiscal year 2013 to $1 billion by 2022. That center will directly collaborate with the university’s recently-appointed Vice President for Research and Innovation Vassilis Syrmos, and it involves launching business models for technology discovered in labs that could be commercialized — a key component of the Hawaii Innovation Initiative’s goal to diversify Hawaii’s economy.

Other funds raised will cover costs associated with expanding programs, bringing in more speakers and training the center’s own teachers to ensure entrepreneurship curriculum is up to speed. Yamada wants to boost participation across various colleges within the university, noting that every student — art, engineering, business majors­ — should graduate equipped with an understanding of entrepreneurial thinking today.

“We’re trying to provide students with experiential training so they can be creative, think outside of the box and figure out what is new and exciting to either change their businesses or create businesses,” she concluded.

The campaign officially launches on Wednesday, though about $1 million has quietly been raised to date.